Abbie looked up at Undertaker Hopkins. In the box of his funeral wagon was a black coffin with a sprinkling of snow on its top. Abbie shook her head, but did not speak. "Guess I shouldn't have asked you," Undertaker Hopkins apologized. "Sorry! Get along as fast as you can, Abbie. It's gettin' mighty, all-fired cold. It'll be a little sheltered when you get over the hill." Undertaker Hopkins drove on. Abbie tried to keep her feet in the fresh track made by the runners. She reached the top of the hill. Owen Frazer's red barn stood up above the snow. Undertaker Hopkins and his funeral wagon had disappeared. "He must have turned down the Mill Road," Abbie muttered. She reached the gate in front of the low, one-story farmhouse. A shepherd dog barked as she went up the path. She rapped at the front door. A woman appeared at the window and pointed to the side of the house. Abbie's face expressed surprise and resentment. She backed down the steps and made her way to the back door. The woman, Owen Frazer's wife, let her into the kitchen. "Owen! Here be Abbie Snover!" Owen Frazer came in from the front of the house. "Good day! Didn't expect you here. Pretty cold out, ain't it? Have a chair." Abbie did not realize how numb the cold had made her body until she tried to sit down. "Maggie, give her a cup of that hot tea," Owen Frazer continued. "She's been almost froze, an' I guess she'll have a cup of tea. Hey! Miss Snover?" "I want to talk to Old Chris." "Talk to Old Chris! Talk to Old Chris, you want to?" Owen Frazer looked at his wife. Abbie Snover didn't know, yet she had walked all the way to Mile Corners in the cold. He couldn't understand it. "What'd you come for, anyhow, Abbie Snover?" "Now, Owen, you wait!" Owen Frazer's wife turned to Abbie: "Got lonesome, did you, all by yourself in that big barn of a house?" "I want to talk to Old Chris," Abbie repeated. "Was you so fond of him, then?" Abbie made no answer. Owen Frazer went over to the sink and looked out of the window at the bed-tick smoldering on the rubbish heap. Owen Frazer's wife pushed open the door of the sitting-room, then stood back and turned to Abbie: "You may be fine old family, Abbie Snover, but we're better. You turned Old Chris out, an' now you want to talk to him. All right, talk to him if you want to. He's in the parlor. Go on in now. Talk to him if you want to--go on in!" The animosity in Mrs. Frazer's voice shook Abbie; she was disturbed; doubt came to her for the first time. As she went through the sitting-room, fear slowed her steps. Perhaps they had turned Old Chris away from her and she would have to go back alone, to live alone, for all the remaining years of her life, in that big house. BOYS WILL BE BOYS[6] [Note 6: Copyright, 1917, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1918, by Irvin S. Cobb.] BY IRVIN S. COBB From _The Saturday Evening Post_